PET near Cooktown, QLD

Cooktown does not have a PET scanner. The nearest one is at Cairns Hospital/Medical Imaging Department in Cairns, about 170 km away, roughly 4 hr 23 min by road. After that, the options are Queensland X-Ray Westcourt in Westcourt (172 km).

Locally, Cooktown is covered for x-ray and ultrasound. A referral for one of those can be done here: everything Cooktown has.

For scale, 75 of the 1062 towns we hold in QLD sit further from PET than Cooktown does.

There is no way around the distance: 170 km each way. Before you commit to it, two things are worth a phone call — your state's patient travel assistance scheme, which exists for people in exactly this position, and whether any service closer to Cooktown visits on a roster. The register cannot show us visiting services.

Queensland has 37 PET practices in total, 23 of them outside the capital. The machines cluster where the population is, which is why the nearest one to Cooktown is where it is.

Accreditation windows: Cairns Hospital/Medical Imaging Department to 31 October 2027 and Queensland X-Ray Westcourt to 30 June 2027. We drop a modality the day its accreditation lapses, so if it is listed above it is current.

Of the two practices listed, all publish a phone number, all have a website and one lists opening hours. Ring before you go rather than assuming — hours move, and not every accredited scan runs every day.